THIRTEEN YEARS OF UNFINISHED BUSINESS

The club that broke our hearts in 2013 once again stands in our way on the road to September glory. The ghosts of Gold Coast are still in the building. Sixty thousand of us are going to be there. Bring it on.

Fremantle: 1st, minor premiers, 19 wins. A club-record season built on a 14-game winning streak between rounds two and 16. Unbeaten at Optus Stadium across the entire home-and-away campaign. Five All-Australians for the first time in club history — Bolton, Clark, Jackson, Reid and Treacy. Win tonight and we get a week off and a home preliminary final.

Hawthorn: 4th, 15-6-2. Top four for the first time since 2018, sealed with a 62-point demolition of West Coast in which Jack Gunston kicked five in his 300th game. Sam Mitchell has built a strong team with a great style of play. They have almost no injury list. And they would like nothing more than to be the first team to beat us at home this year.

THE RECKONING WE'VE WAITED THIRTEEN YEARS FOR

On the 28th of September, 2013, Fremantle played in its first and only Grand Final, and Hawthorn beat us 11.11 (77) to 8.14 (62). We had 22 scoring shots (and a few misses) to their 22 and lost by 15 points because the ball would just not go through the middle. Ross Lyon’s defensive masterpiece held the greatest attacking side of the era to 77 points and it still wasn’t enough. Every purple person old enough remembers precisely where they were sitting. Most of us have not watched the replay. Some of us have not forgiven the inaccurate kicking.

Two years later they did it again, the 2015 preliminary final, minor premiers, home ground, gone. Three finals between these clubs and Hawthorn have taken two of them, both when it mattered most. Our lone win came in the 2010 elimination final, which was lovely, but nobody builds a monument to an elimination final. All-time, the Hawks lead this head-to-head 29 wins to 16 from 45 games. On paper, this is the club that owns us.

Except history can be misleading. The modern record reads: Fremantle have won eight of the past nine meetings with Hawthorn, the solitary exception a 13-point loss in Launceston in 2024. The men who broke our hearts in 2013 are commentators and coaches now. The men in purple tonight were, in several cases, in primary school. This is not a revenge mission for the players. It is a revenge mission for the rest of us, and we have been saving it up for thirteen years.

AND THE OTHER GHOST

There is a fresher wound, and we may as well press on it ourselves before some Melbourne-based panel show does it for us. Three hundred and sixty-two days ago, on this same ground, Fremantle led an elimination final late and lost it by a single point when David Swallow, in his final season, nudged a behind through with nine seconds on the clock. Gold Coast won their first final in fifteen years. We went home.

So yes: tonight is where we find out whether this group has exorcised its demons, or merely rescheduled them. The good news is that the evidence is overwhelming. This is not the fourth-youngest side that froze last September. This is a team that has spent the entire season winning games precisely when they looked lost — goalless at half time against Sydney and 38-point winners; nineteen points down early in the last quarter against these very Hawks in round nine and winners by 15. Fremantle in 2026 have not been a front-running team. They have been a finishing team. That is a very different animal to bring into September.

Back in May these two met on this ground on a Thursday night and produced one of the games of the season. Hawthorn led by 15 at the last change and by 19 early in the final term. Jack Gunston had kicked five before half time and looked unstoppable. Karl Amon had 31 disposals and 878 metres gained. Optus Stadium was very quiet.

Then Luke Jackson put the cape on. Nine disposals in the final quarter, eight of them contested, three marks, three clearances, finishing with 22 touches, 22 hitouts, ten tackles, seven clearances and nine score involvements. Fremantle kicked the last five goals of the match to win 12.16 (88) to 11.7 (73). Michael Frederick and Jye Amiss booted three apiece. Sam Mitchell said afterwards his side had been taught a bit of a lesson. Wharfie Time was born.

The tactical lesson from that night still applies: do not give Jack Gunston space. At 34, in a season where he has kicked 59 goals in 17 games, he remains the most intelligent forward in the competition and he had five on us before the main break. The Dockers' defence will not offer him that again. Expect Luke Ryan to go to him early and then McDonald and expect the contest to be a lot less accommodating than it was in May.

THE MATCH-UPS THAT DECIDE IT

This game turns on three contests, and Fremantle wins at least two of them.

• Newcombe and Day vs Serong and Brayshaw. Jai Newcombe is a genuine finals animal, 29.2 disposals across five finals, six above his home-and-away average, and 6.8 clearances. He led the entire competition at 7.6 clearances a game this year. But he is one man, and he is walking into the best midfield in football, with Caleb Serong and Andrew Brayshaw fresh and Murphy Reid back from a groin complaint. Will day is back into the form that makes him incredibly damaging, both in the midfield and up forward. If we win this battel, Hawthorn are in trouble at the coalface.

• Watson vs Walker. Here is Longmuir’s big call of the week. Brandon Walker has been recalled for his first game since round one, just his fourth in two seasons specifically to handle Nick Watson, who took a Mark of the Year contender in round 24 and is the Hawks’ most dangerous small. It is a bold, cold-blooded selection: a defender with almost no football behind him, handed the most important individual job of the night. If it works, Longmuir is a genius. If it doesn’t, this column will pretend it never had doubts.

• Jackson and Cox vs Fremantle reject Meek and Reeves. Luke Jackson beat them almost single-handedly in May and is now an All-Australian. Every hitout he wins to advantage is a Serong clearance, and every Serong clearance is an inside 50 for a forward line featuring Treacy, Amiss, Voss and Frederick. This is where Fremantle’s season has lived all year.

THE TEAM NEWS

Losing Brennan Cox to a moderate calf strain hurts, he is a genuine key defender, kept Gunston out of the second half back in round 9 and the club is hopeful of having him back post-final. But look at what comes the other way: Amiss, Chapman, Switkowski and Reid all return from the round 24 rest-and-recover programme, and Jordan Clark runs out for game 150 fresh off back-to-back All-Australian selections. Hawthorn get Jack Ginnivan back from a back complaint and are otherwise near enough to full strength. Nobody gets to blame the medical room tomorrow morning.

The one worry; Fremantle have lost two of their last three, including that Round 24 dead rubber against Carlton with three stars in deckchairs and as fans know, we have never been good off the bye. The narrative merchants over east have spent the fortnight suggesting the Dockers have gone off the boil at exactly the wrong moment, that the rotations cost us rhythm, that minor premiers are historically vulnerable in week one.

Here is the counter. The Melbourne loss was by four points on the road in a game we led deep into the final term. The Carlton loss was a tune-up with a debutant and three rested All-Australian-calibre players. In between, we won a minor premiership. Fremantle have not lost a game at Optus Stadium since the first round of the season, and Hawthorn are coming here to try to end that in a final, in front of a sold-out, purple, feral house, on a Thursday night in September. Good luck.

THE CONDITIONS

Tonight will be a proper Perth spring evening: around 17 degrees at the bounce falling to 14, mostly overcast, a decent northwesterly at 30 to 35 km/h and a genuine chance of showers rolling through. Not a downpour, but greasy enough in patches to matter. That helps the contested, stoppage-heavy side, which is precisely what Hawthorn are, and puts an even higher premium on winning the ball at the source. It is also, conveniently, exactly the weather this Fremantle side has played in all winter. Hawthorn will be reminded that Optus Stadium in a westerly is a very different proposition to the MCG in September sunshine.

THE VERDICT

The demons get exorcised, not rescheduled. Fremantle win, the Fortress holds one last time, and we go straight through to a home preliminary final.

Hawthorn are good. Mitchell has them organised, Newcombe will win his contested ball, Gunston will kick a few, and there will be a stretch, probably in the third quarter, because there always is, where the crowd goes quiet and thirteen years of history sits heavily in the stomach. That is finals football. That is the price of admission.

But this side has answered that question every single week of 2026. Serong and Brayshaw win the last quarter. Jackson goes up a gear when it matters, as he did in May. Treacy and Amiss find the space that a defence chasing the game always concedes. And when the siren goes, the loudest noise in Western Australian sport will be sixty thousand people letting go of something they have been holding since 2013.

Freo by 23